Pets provide a great deal of joy and companionship to persons of all ages, including the elderly and infirm. Many types of devices have been developed to facilitate pickup, removal, as well as disposal of fecal matter. Many of these devices are hand-held and require a user to have to bend down to the ground to pick up or scoop up the fecal matter using the device. For the elderly, the infirm and those with back problems, hand-held fecal matter pickup devices are a less than desirable solution. Moreover, any direct contact with waste material could result in illness.
A large number of patents and publications relate to pet waste scooping devices. Some of the embodiments comprise a pair of movable scoop jaws attached to a long handle configured to manipulate the jaws under the feces and actuate the jaws to entrap the waste. Bags are used with some of these devices; however, providing for mechanisms to cleanly close and remove such bags without feces contamination has been an issue and remains largely unresolved.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,628,431 relates to a device for removing canine fecal matter that includes a lobed knob connected by concentric tubes to a dual housing. U.S. Pat. No. 7,261,347 provides structures for orienting a container for scooping up waste, and various structures for sealing such a container. U.S. Pat. No. 6,641,188 teaches an animal waste scooper device comprising a hand grip on one end of a shaft and a scoop with an openable door and a removable bag at the opposite end. The device described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,305,322 contains a claw having four arms in which a bag is placed. Both U.S. Pat. No. 5,628,537 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,477,111 use jaws arrangements encased by a bag.
Two embodiments of pet collection and isolation devices are presented for this invention. Both embodiments provide for the remote manipulation of the waste using a bag and closing the bag around the feces such that the user does not come in contact with the feces and the device remains uncontaminated. The first embodiment uses a cord ensnaring mechanism while the second provides a mechanism for moving jaws encased by a bag under the feces and closing the bag around them.